Fire Marshal's Office disputes complaints

Monday

Dec 10, 2012 at 8:55 PM

A recent complaint from a government watchdog group that the state Fire Marshal's Office mishandled safety concerns about a Grand Isle apartment building where two people later died in a fire is “irresponsible,” an agency official said.

Xerxes WilsonStaff Writer

A recent complaint from a government watchdog group that the state Fire Marshal's Office mishandled safety concerns about a Grand Isle apartment building where two people later died in a fire is “irresponsible,” an agency official said.“It is so irresponsible to suggest that these fire deaths are related to substandard living quarters,” Deputy Chief Brant Thompson of the State Fire Marshal's Office said Monday.Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche, who filed the complaint with the state Inspector General's Office, said the Fire Marshal's Office didn't follow its own protocol investigating safety concerns of a neighbor to the Willow Creek Apartments, which caught fire Sept. 27. The fire claimed the lives of Timothy Foret, 46, and Belle Christin Brandl, 60, who lived in separate apartments there. The allegations center around a complaint filed by the building's neighbor in May.The complaint, addressed to the Fire Marshal's Office, said there were doors, window air-conditioners and windows missing, and the building had no smoke detectors or fire extinguishers. The neighbor called the building an “extreme fire hazard.”But Thompson said there were smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers were later found fully emptied and lying in the middle of the burned floor. Public records show there were two visits to the complex by an inspector responding to the initial complaint.The inspector was unable to contact management at the complex, records show. He made brief contact with a resident and verbally confirmed he had a smoke detector. No formal inspection was conducted on the visits. Goyeneche contends the Fire Marshal's Office broke its own procedure by not doing a thorough investigation.“When the district chief arrived, the information in the complaint was not consistent with the observations he made,” Thompson said in response. “He then has the discretion on how to handle the complaint.”Thompson said the investigator who visited the site saw no hazards, such as blocked exits.Much of complaint mentioned issues outside the Fire Marshal's authority such as missing windows and air conditioners, Thompson said.Thompson also said a fire marshal inspector cannot demand entry into a private residence. “To suggest that there is a correlation between the complaint filed by (Milton) Bourgeois and the tragic fire is irresponsible,” Thompson said. Investigators concluded the fire was started outside the building and spread, blocking the only exit from the victims' apartments.“I can't say if (the inspection) had occurred the fire wouldn't have happened and those two people wouldn't have died,” Goyeneche said. He has forwarded fire marshal public records and complaints to the state inspector general.